A musical intermission
by ThePryn
Summary: Musical intermission between Christmas in Moscow and its sequel. Alega looks back on the events that brought her and Matt to Moscow.


A/N:

I've got a good excuse this time; moving countries and jump starting you life with only 28 kg's worth of your earlier life is... time consuming.

This is the musical intermission between Christmas in Moscow and its sequel. As response for the last chapters of CiM (which were AWESOME, by the way) I mostly got Alega roasted... on a skewer... over the escaping flames from the gates of hell... -ish. So I'm gonna go out on a whim and say that you're gonna LOVE this.

I'll see you at the bottom.

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Rated M: Because of swearing, implications and... sugar, spice and everything that's nice?  
**CONTAINS SELF-HARM-TRIGGERS!** Can't handle it? **Don't read it!**

Disclaimer: _All hail the almighty creators of Death Note!_  
I own nothing (but the contents of a zebra-print trunk)!

Song used: The Ark - It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane.

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I sigh heavily, my breath hanging in the frostbitten air, glittering in the sunlight. Bringing my numb fingertips, peeking out of my glovettes, to the strings I strike the first chord. The rest comes naturally after that, I don't even have to think about it, leaving my mind free to wander as I sing the first lines. But the people supposed to receive them, hurrying past me in a mindless synchronicity, doesn't even see me and the words are left dangling in the air. Unseen and unnoticed, even as the sun shines on them.

"_**What ever happened to the funky race? A generation lost in pace. Wasn't life supposed to be more than this?"**_

I can't blame them though, living in incognito has always been my thing. It's to blame for me being who I am and finding myself on these Moscow streets as the cold bites harder in February than it did in January, and December before that. It's been there since the beginning, will be there at the end and as it is my curse, it also is the reason for the existence I am to call mine.

When I was four my parents tried to murder me and my older brother by tying us up in the basement and attempting to leave the country. In their psych-hearing they stated that we weren't their children, that we would disappear and reappear whenever we wanted and each time we'd change our appearance, everything to drive them insane. They got labeled as paranoid schizophrenics and lifetime in a closed ward.

My brother and I were sent from our home in sunny Los Angeles to the wide plains of England, so dull and grey that you inevitably grew pale and lifeless, and to some extent I suppose that was their intention. Wammy's orphanage for young prodigies was founded by some old rich geezer to recruit and raise children, specializing and exceeding in their blood born area of expertise - marketable skills attracting a very special clientele - to later be the perfect pawns, sold off to the highest bidder, be it the mafia or the FBI.

We, my brother and I, were told that we'd been honored by being handpicked by the headmaster, who didn't see our case file as a tragic example of parental negligence and mental instability, but as two children with the rare and profitable gift of disguise.

They put great effort in isolating and separating us, we weren't even supposed to share our names with the other children, getting letters to refer each other with - not that common conversation was particularly encouraged. Big bro' managed to advance very well in our shared expertise, but had a hard time adjusting to the objectifying and high pressure put on us with the progress tests, and if I'd been just a bit older I wouldn't have taken it too well either. Most kids broke with time, and big bro' would've cracked far earlier if it hadn't been for that sweet angel A; may his wretched soul rest in peace.

When the pressure ultimately got to A and they found him hanging by his neck from the entrance hall chandelier big bro' disappeared the same night, turning up a week later, bent over the headmaster's bed with a butcher's knife raised above his head. Big bro' ended up in the same asylum as our parents. It's oddly comforting to know they're all bunched up together in the same place.

"_**Oh, 'cause it takes a fool to remain sane…"**_

I let the final note ring out, frowning as I notice it slightly off-key, cursing the cold for making me retune my guitar every five minutes.

I didn't even notice that my eyes were closed until a lonely applause reaches my ears and I have to distinctly open them again to find the old caricature painter grinning a toothless smile approvingly at me over his shoulder. If anyone would've noticed my eyes closed behind the black-out John Lennon's, graciously balanced on the bridge of my nose, it ought to be the old geezer. We oddballs have a keen eye for details in each other when no one else even bothers to look twice.

Looking down at my feet I see the small copper coins, aimlessly scattered around my feet, the people donating them could've just as well have meant to simply garnish the gutter. Shifting my eyes only slightly I further notice my fingertips taking on a light layer of dusty white, a bad sign telling me that it's high time for a coffee break.

I squat and collect the morning's meager commission, unplug my guitar from the amp and sling it to lie across my back as I make my way across the street. Stopping by my artistic companion I look down on him where he sits curled into himself on a crate, dangerously close to collapsing under his, probably, light weight.

"Ой, старик, смотри мои вещи (Hey, man, watch my stuff)", I coax out of myself, patching together the few words I even bothered to learn in Russian.

"Есть (Will do)", he gins back at me and sends me off with a small salute, displaying his filthy, threadbare mittens, which he proceeds to wipe his running nose with.

In the back of my mind I note to bring the poor devil some hot tea, if my budget would stretch that far, as I continue my short journey to one of the many coffee franchises scattered along the boardwalk. I would've honestly made far bigger winnings with just taking a walk to the supermarket, picking abandoned kopecks from the end of the conveyor belt, but of course I didn't do this for the money.

The last five weeks have been hell, frozen over, on earth, and that's even without taking the blasted weather into account. In the long run I couldn't make myself stay in the apartment, only coming back upstairs as the night fell and the streets truly turning uninhabitable. I would've returned for the night even if that wasn't the case; rapists lurking in the shadows and the air covering the insides of my lungs with frost were the least of my problems. And besides, if anything the guilt would've more likely been the cause my death than any exterior agent.

The nights kept me busy enough to be fueled mainly by my own stubbornness and unhealthy amounts of coffee during the days. Note to self; don't forget to pick up coffee –or at least what they would call coffee - on the way home. That would mean he's finally going to leave the apartment today, thanks to the shackles of caffeine addiction dragging him across the street to the closest coffee-house. Which makes my choosing of café so much easier.

I'm welcomed by a waft of hot air as I enter the front doors of the café, making a beeline through the vicinity, crowded over capacity and overwhelming the petite waitresses rushing from table to table, looking like they were all holding their breaths, to the stairs leading to the smoking lounge in the basement. Before taking the last three steps down I stop to locate the tuft of tasselled red tresses over the sea of ratty brown and silver blondes. In the inner corner the small dot of crimson beams like the shine of a light house, even through the dim lights and added shadows of my shades. Somewhat easier I make my way over to the lanky boy in the full, but not crowded, basement. Long legs lazily splayed out under the tabletop, leaned back in his chair, eyes flickering over, though never leaving, the laptop screen behind the orange goggles he stole from my room and fingers running mad over the keys. Oh yeah, he's totally wired in.

"Hi", I greet as I sling my guitar back up front before sitting down, across from the red-head, getting a hum as response.

When I first met Mail Jeevas it had been two years since they dragged my brother away, wailing and thrashing through the night, in a white windowless van, and the loneliness had steadily decreased my mental stability, but as long as my results kept far above average no measures were taken. Besides, any measures taken for even a slight depression always ended with that god forsaken white van. Driving off into the night, its tail lights glowing red, like a pair of ravenous eyes staring at you and promising that the next time it would come for you before they faded away in the distance. Wammy's kept a strict security policy about these things, even before Big bro's incident. There were no margins for damaged goods.

The only actual alternative was self-medication, which I masterfully disguised with long sleeves and empty smiles. I had turned into what I'd like to call an endorphin-junkie, commonly known as a cutter. The anxiety attacks would rake through my body all through night and lay simmering just under the surface in the dim daylights. Never really stabile, fearing the next moment to push me over the edge, carefully placing one foot in front of the other but never really getting anywhere.

I remember staring out the window as the car caught my attention, and the thought of fresh meat would've just passed me by without much interest, if the class I was sitting in hadn't been the "one time only and may we never speak of it again"-human reproduction lesson. Approaching the subject in the most objective manner possible, going through the chemical process in the human body during coitus, the professor kept clearing his throat awkwardly, unknowing that he basically was giving my beautiful scheming mind a cheat-sheet.

A plan was put together in my head as the red-headed boy exited the slick vehicle and looked up at me with his emeralds, sending one of the warmest smiles I'd ever seen in my thirteen year old lifetime. Deep inside I think I knew even then that he didn't belong there and that he never would. With my mind occupied, just for that one brief moment, I forgot to slide my mask on, staying in my empty stare. His face fell as he was left standing there on the courtyard grinning seemingly to himself, soon replaced by a deep frown, folding his brow as he was gently ushered inside and out of my sight.

We were roomed by ranking, and since I apparently was a pioneering girl in the male-chauvinistic hellhole of an establishment to reach any kind of heights, I'd remained without a roommate since my brother ran away. Either kids weren't dying off in a rapid enough pace, resulting in a shortage of rooms, or fate finally decided to play in my advantage, giving me a roommate for the first time in two years. In either case the headmaster had blatantly disregarded the stupidity of pairing up two hormone strung teenagers of the opposite sex in the same room. And so, to my devious mind's pleasure, I found the red-head patiently waiting for me on the spare bed in my room after classes had ended that day.

I heard his voice for the very first time as I gave him my virginity five minutes after I entered the room. The experience left much to be desired. Pushing him forcefully on his back I'd mounted him greedily, impaling myself, driving excruciating pain through my body as soon as his member had stiffened, haphazardly released through the zipper of his jeans. I ended up never getting the fix I so desperately craved, there was just the plain, tasteless pain without the comforting high to follow. I grunted afterwards, feeling the younglings' organ go slack inside me, the lanky boy under me gasping for air in his aftermath mixed with mind numbing confusion.

Sighing heavily of disappointment I pushed myself off him, declaring my plan as unsuccessful, banishing any thought of giving it another try out of my mind. Cleaning myself up in the bathroom I swiftly proceeded to exit the – no longer my and not quite our yet - room. The ordeal didn't even throw me into an angst filled abyss, making me fear the oncoming night with its inevitable compensation. Right then I just felt simple hunger.

"Oy", the boy exclaimed, making me turn around to see him scramble to a sitting position on the bed, not even found the time to stuff himself back into his pants, "where are you going?", he asked confusedly.

I glared at him, I didn't want him there to begin with, even if my plan had actually worked. He looked down at himself, dragging his hands through his crimson tresses, heaving a deep sigh.

"I'm Matt", he said and looked up at me with a steady gaze, demanding me to exchange something else than pathetic panting whimpers.

"X", I threw over my shoulder and left.

That same night I discovered Matt's night terrors. I was sat in the middle of the bathroom, watching the blood drip onto the tiled floor. My whole body shaking, hands being the exception, as I dragged the razor across the few patches of skin that weren't already split, looking like gaping mouths, in varying states of scabbing. The night's session had only just begun when I at first I thought that it was me screaming. It was so desperate, so terrified that I almost thought I'd finally gone insane.

When I beside myself realized that couldn't possibly be the case, the scream sounding far too foreign and air distinctly haling in and out of my lungs while the breath behind the scream seemed never-ending, I rushed out of the bathroom, only having pulled down the sleeves of my pajama shirt. The blood slowly sipping through the fresh cuts and would glue the fabric to my arm as it dried in the morning. A beam of light spilled out into our darkened room, illuminating the wide eyed boy, covered in a sheen of sweat and tears, still screaming, blinded by fear.

"What the fuck?!", I shrieked at the boy, falling on deaf ears as the terror still held its steady grip around him. Thinking back now, it was probably to save my own skin that I took those speedy steps across the room, diving at him to muffle the screams with what means I bared, being my own body. If anyone would've heard him, he wouldn't be the only one to be carried away in a van; the bathroom providing with enough evidence to get me a lifetime in straps, drooling in a Zoloft induced haze.

The vibrations penetrating my chest died out soon enough, replaced with a waterfall of tears, heavy sobs and Matt's arms, wrapping themselves around my body and holding me tighter than I'd held him. Steadily the paralyze crept in on me, a product of the interruption, and as my lungs tightened I was rendered unable to pull away as Matt emerged from my bosom, reaching up and closing his lips around mine. Any protest I tried to push out of my mouth only resulting in my mouth opening voicelessly, undoubtedly perceived as a welcome for Matt's incisive tongue.

It was sloppy. Tears, snot, sweat and saliva mingled together to a human cocktail of angst as the blood in my veins turned to acid and I felt shocks thundering through me, raking through my body as Matt's hands searched it hurriedly, desperately. A mumbling rose from his lips as he pushed me back on the bed, after only a couple of minutes during which my breasts had been enclosed by gentle teenage hands and my neck had been covered in a trail of kisses, punctuating the lump in which my no's and get-off-me's coiled unuttered. Through the white noise in my head I managed to hear it, like a mantra, said again and again, as a doubted truth in your last moments on earth;

"I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you…"

He kept saying it, even as a muffled mumbling when he kissed my lips, my unmoving form only managing to gasp for air, craving the bittersweet release found only under the sharp edge of a razor, until he ultimately fell asleep, the syllables detaching from each other as he drifted farther away.

Matt kept me as a human mattress the whole night, taunting me with his ability to sleep when I barely could breathe. The sun had already started to rise when he finally rolled off me, still in his sleep but seemingly calmer, apart from the low whimper as my weight, with great effort, managed to leave the mattress.

Fearing that I'd stirred him enough to bring about his awakening I didn't dare to indulge in relieving myself from the swelling lump in my stomach, throbbing like it was about to burst, but started to peel off my night shirt, putting it in a quick, cold soak in the sink. I wrapped myself up in some gauze haphazardly and flung the shirt to dry on the shower curtain railing before cleaning the floor from the few puddles of blood.

Peeking out the door I saw Matt still in bed, tossing and turning in his uneasy sleep, and hurried to my wardrobe to change into my uniform before he'd, probably shortly, wake up. I managed to just shrug on my shirt as he flew out of bed, like spring bound. He didn't scream this time, but he looked fearfully around himself, looking haunted. He hadn't even spent twenty-four entire hours at Wammy's but I knew then, as I looked at him over my shoulder while buttoning up my shirt, that many more worried nights would follow.

"I'm here", I said, buttoning the last cuff tightly around my right wrist. At the moment I thought nothing of it, but as the years went by the thoughtless words meant to comfort turned into reality. I would always be there.

A brunette waitress is about to pass me without a second glance for the umpteenth time when I put out my arm and catch her around her hips. She gives out a gasp and some oi-ing sounds, much like a frightened guinea pig, not looking as offended as she looked apologetic.

"Yeah, whatever", I waved her off and she plucked up her notepad, "I'll have a cappuccino and a refill for my friend, thanks."

I'm about to engage myself in finally tuning my guitar as the brunette chirps a quaint "что, что?".

I sigh and turn back to the girl, giving her one over. Her slender body had all the fat strategically put around her hips and chest, around her hairline the baby-hairs curled with a ratty grey color, unveiling the rich, deep chestnut-brown actually originated from a bottle. Her lips were plump to the extent where they looked more like a beak, with that over exaggerated Barbie-pink gloss, making them look plastic, much like her eyes. They weren't dead, just absent of any spirit what so ever.

"Oh, so cute but, oh, so stupid…", I shake my head pitifully at her.

"Allie, behave…" Matt's voice warned.

"Hey, you're wired in, you have no say in this", I throw back before once again participating in the everyday struggle that is the language barrier. "Why doesn't anyone here speak English?", I mutter under my breath before coaxing my order out of myself with pointing at myself and clearly articulating "CAP-U-CHI-NO" and then giving Matt's empty cup a tap, spelling out "RE-FILL".

The waitress scribbles down my order and then gives me a scared nod before scurrying away.

"You just have to imagine that everybody is stupid as fuck when you're trying to talk to them", I muse out loud, "isn't that right Matty?"

Matt scoffs beside himself, still wired in, but it doesn't seem like it's something of great importance. Or rather, it doesn't take up much of his concentration. I've always admired his persistence, his immense focus, and truth be told I should really be grateful for it. If it wasn't for Matt's hard head I would most likely not be alive.

Back at Wammy's the years passed, three to be exact, and though I can't say that those three years was the ones that brought me and Matt to become inseparable enough for him to end me up in Russia, it was the ones I spent the closest to him. Physically. I still don't know today where Matt come from and what beast bit him hard enough to give him those blasted night terrors, but back then I had already accepted that they existed, and more over that what didn't work for me in the department of sexually attained endorphin kicks very much worked for Matt.

I didn't let him touch me, obviously, but when the really bad nights came around I, so to speak, gave him a helping hand. I saw it as a safety precaution, in his worst hours Matt wouldn't stop wailing until I laid down beside him, if only to curl up against me and make me hold him as he kissed my face, always chanting his I-love-you's.

It didn't help me, the emotional outbursts and continuous confirmation of affection. When I eventually came to think it over I couldn't find any motives, any explanation. It was too irrational, too blind, raw and, as it turned out, ultimately true affection. But I was unreachable by then. Not only had my body grown numb – looking at it objectively it wouldn't surprise me if the detachment of my own body coming from cutting off too many nerves - , the nothingness had taken over my heart. I walked around existing, but barely so.

It was in September, the god forgotten month of the year. For weeks the sun hadn't even been inclined to peek though the led-colored clouds and it was clear that the pitifully short summer was dying and the oncoming fall with its cold winds and even shorter, darker days was upon us.

I'd been floating through the days, constantly bleeding from one place or another, not even giving my body time to clot before having to sooth another attack. This was clearly my last few weeks living, rounding up. For years I'd known that the edge was there, just a step away, but only then I could really feel it, opening up before me, so close that I might just tumble over it, by my own will or lack of fight to lean away from it.

I didn't see much of Matt during the days; him being a tech-major and I not, he held up in a completely different building. So I suppose it was all a matter of chance that I'd meet him in the corridor that morning as I was aimlessly finding my way to class, slapping on my trusty façade of a bright smile across my face. Looking back on it that might have been the very first time I actually smiled at him.

At first he looked shocked, pausing his step just for a second, before his face turned dark and his jaws set. He walked up to me, moving in close laying a tender hand against my lower back and whispered poisonously, hissed, through his teeth:

"Don't you dare smile at me, love."

As he left, taking the tender touch with him, I felt like he had finally pushed me, that I was finally falling head first into the darkness. I was expecting feeling relieved, but I felt nothing, not even as the shadows scattered and I found myself on the bathroom floor, blood steadily pooling around me. Couldn't have been an impressive puddle, but when I blacked out again I knew I wouldn't wake up again.

Egg on my face.

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A/N:

I don't intend this to be a very long story, maybe two or three chapters, and I will try to have the same kind of Christmas-writing-marathon as last year.

The song I used in the beginning is The Ark - It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane, the anthem of my youth. I just felt like "If it takes a fool to remain sane then Wammy's house must be a house of lunatics".

Keep the reviews coming - _it's better than Swedish coffee_... **and I do like my Swedish coffee**.

The Pryn, over and out.

P.S. If you haven't got it yet; Alega is supposed to be BB's little sister. Madness ensues.


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